HAPLESS mirror-shaded Gallic ‘soft-synth’ rumination on the difficulty of expressing emotion through the medium of, well, ‘words’. They don’t come easy, apparently. Seemingly taken a lot more seriously on the continent – witness his track-long miming on a white Stratocaster despite there being barely any guitar to speak of, and his positioning in front of a psychedelic backdrop (doubtless the result of someone, as Europeans are wont to do, declaring that it sounded ‘just like The Beatles’) – but embraced over here (via exposure on a short-lived Top Of The Pops ‘Euro’ slot) for endearing hopelessness to near-chart-topping extremes, memorably dubbed ‘The Multi-Talented FR David’ by John Peel, and equally memorably given nought out of ten in a Smash Hits album review. Follow up single, Music (which, it should be noted, he had already claimed did come easy to him), predictably flopped, but we will never forget.

Surely those of us of a certain age can remember about ten years earlier when Gilbert Becaud scored a big hit with A Little Love and Understanding, sung in a rather comical French accent with an orchestral backing. I am ze voice on your transistor radio, ho, ho, ho.

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Bullseye
Sunday, 12.00, Challenge

An hour of post-watershed Bullseye and not even the “‘e’s pissin’ deaf!” clip? What is the point! We didn’t think much of the Bullseye documentary, actually, the usual fare of badly cropped clips, talking heads offering nothing and endless repetition, and though you can see it again tonight, you’ll probably get more entertainment from this, bloody hell, eight hour marathon of the show.